Le Mars, Iowa – In a q & a at an Iowa restaurant this afternoon, Mitt Romney told a questioner that if he were president and Congress passed the DREAM Act, he would veto it. Romney has harshly criticized both Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich for their stances on immigration, but has also been endorsed by former Florida senator Mel Martinez, who co-sponsored the DREAM Act.
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Romney Says He’d Veto DREAM Act
As tea party support splinters along more traditional political lines, polls show that hopes for nominating a conservative outsider who embodies constitutional ideals have withered. The question now is whether tea partiers will embrace a more conventional presidential nominee.
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Despite Ron Paul surge, tea party hopes on the ropes in Iowa
AP – President Barack Obama signed a wide-ranging defense bill into law Saturday despite having “serious reservations” about provisions that regulate the detention, interrogation and prosecution of suspected terrorists.
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Obama signs defense bill despite ‘reservations’
(AP)
Reuters – President Barack Obama, striking a hopeful note in a year-end weekly address, hailed foreign policy milestones while keeping pressure on Congress to further extend payroll tax cuts through the end of 2012.
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Obama strikes hopeful note in year-end address
(Reuters)
Reuters – President Barack Obama signed into law on Saturday a defense funding bill that imposes sanctions on financial institutions dealing with Iran’s central bank, while allowing for exemptions to avoid upsetting energy markets.
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U.S. imposes sanctions on banks dealing with Iran
(Reuters)
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Women Who Drink Wine Every Day Say They Have Better Sex. “According to a new study, women who drink two glasses of wine every day say they’re having better sex than their teetotaling counterparts. To be fair, that could be the wine talking.” But in vino, veritas.
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NEWS YOU CAN USE: Women Who Drink Wine Every Day Say They Have Better Sex. “According to a new stu…
Reuters – President Barack Obama signed new sanctions against Iran into law on Saturday, shortly after Iran signaled it was ready for fresh talks with the West on its nuclear programme and said it had delayed long-range missile tests in the Gulf.
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U.S. steps up sanctions as Iran floats nuclear talks
(Reuters)
I just watched this remarkable tribute to Christopher Hitchens by Fr. Robert Barron, and it confirms to me yet again that Kathryn Lopez is 100 percent correct about Father Barron: He is the most impressive Catholic apologist of our time. Too many Catholic apologists — and the exact same goes for Protestant apologists, and atheist apologists, and what-have-you apologists; it’s the occupational hazard in that line of work — come across as smug tribalists sneering at the lesser people not fortunate enough to be within their circle. Watch this video of Father Barron on Creative Minority Report and you will see why he is so good at apologetics: He is clearly someone who is catholic in the true lower-case-c sense, and infused with love for a (in this instance, one particular) fellow man. I had my problems with Christopher Hitchens — who didn’t? — and Barron mentions some of these issues in the video. But he puts those disagreements in a very realistic context, in what I think is an attempt to see our brother Christopher with God’s eyes. That is what we are called to do even with our outright enemies, never mind people who might say an unkind word about (or to) us now and again. Now there ’s a resolution for the New Year: Try to be as charitable with people who disagree with me as Father Barron is in his comments on Hitchens. (One hell of a challenge; but then, so, of course, is Christianity. In fact, it’s the same challenge.) If any e-mailer or comboxer views this as an invitation to put my resolution to the test, let me say, preemptively, to that person: Have a blessed and happy New Year!
AP – Mitt Romney is the clear Republican front-runner in Iowa in the final days before the first voting in the 2012 presidential election. But that’s where the glimmer of clarity ends in this unpredictable nomination race.
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Romney has Iowa edge, glimmer of clarity in race?
(AP)
J. Michael Wenger talked about Japanese attack on the Naval Air Station at Kaneohe Bay on the island of Oahu a few minutes before Pearl Harbor was attacked on December 7, 1941.
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Attack on Kaneohe Bay – Michael Wenger